


Come Hell or Helwater

by Lenny9987



Series: Lenny's Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [43]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-05-17 10:27:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14830542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987
Summary: Prompt: Imagine that Claire had come back to the past early (with Brianna), and ended up taking a job at Helwater, at least temporarily, so that she could stay close to Jamie.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a one-shot but I've received so much interest and enthusiasm about it that I'll probably do a few more short installments set in this AU. There will probably be some time jumps between them and I don't know when precisely I'll write them, but I do have some ideas...
> 
> Edited 6/6/18: Okay, those few additional ideas have blossomed into something with a lot more shape. It might even be a plot. *gasp* Going to run with it.

Fergus and Brianna hung back with the cart while Claire stalked up the front steps. The door opened before she could knock and the doorman in his perfectly tailored and ironed livery took a long moment to look her up and down (taking in her dusty and wrinkled, travel-worn clothes) before asking, “How may I be of service?”

“I would like to see Lord and Lady Dunsany, please,” she replied, holding her head high and remembering the way she had carried herself in Paris when her social circle had included French royalty and she’d dined at Versailles. 

The doorman’s eyes narrowed as he assessed her again after hearing her accent and having more time to take in her bearing. 

“Whom shall I tell them is calling and to what is the visit in reference?” 

What was the name Jamie had written to Jenny he used here? Not Malcolm but Mackenzie.

“I am Mrs. Mackenzie and I have come to see my husband,” she told him. She hoped she’d successfully infused more confidence into her statement than she felt. 

But whatever doubt her attitude had inspired in the doorman evaporated when he heard her name. 

“Your husband is in the fields about his work. If you need to see him then you should go round to the servants’ entrance and wait for him in the kitchens,” the doorman dismissed her.

She reached out and blocked him closing the door on her. “I have matters to discuss with Lord and Lady Dunsany concerning my husband’s position here and I  _ will _ see them about it first,” she insisted. “Please let them know that I am come. My children and I can wait here in the entry while you inform your master of our presence.”

The doorman looked past Claire, finally taking not of Fergus and Brianna that short distance away. As though he’d heard her mention them, Fergus urged Brianna toward the door. 

Resigned, he held the door open for them gave Claire a warning glare before stalking off to the sitting room to explain their arrival. 

“It is a nice house, Milady,” Fergus whispered, assessing their surroundings.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” Claire ordered the still-sometimes pickpocket. “You two will stay here until you’re sent for.”

“And what are you going to say to them, Mama?” Brianna asked, clearly nervous.

“I’m not entirely sure yet but I suppose I’ll figure it out when I say it.” The doorman reappeared and with a begrudging expression indicated for Claire to follow. 

Claire wiped her hands on her skirts as she walked and did her best to flatten the wrinkles before realizing it was probably the wild curls that had broken loose that would raise the most eyebrows in that sitting room. But there was no mirror to stop in front of and the doorman wasn’t about to slow down. 

“Mrs. Mackenzie,” he announced as he stood holding the door open. 

Claire bowed her head to the gentleman standing before her. A young woman was seated beside him, her eyes fixed on Claire and her expression somewhere between amused and confused. 

“Mrs. Mackenzie.” Lord Dunsany’s greeting wasn’t warm but neither was it impolite. “You’ve caught us by surprise, I’m afraid. My wife and younger daughter are out of the house at the moment. This is Geneva, my elder daughter.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Claire said with an apologetic smile. “And I do apologize for arriving unannounced like this. We’ve traveled a great distance and weren’t entirely certain of the way.”

“Mackenzie never told us he was married,” Geneva remarked. “Or rather… No, I believe he said his wife had died.” 

Claire hoped the heat in her cheeks wasn’t showing. 

“It’s not altogether surprising he should think I was dead. For the better part of the last ten years I was led to believe  _ he _ was dead. Having finally discovered the truth and traced where he was—you can understand my haste in coming at once.” 

“Indeed,” Lord Dunsany muttered, his mind obviously churning through the problem of how best to handle the situation. “Geneva. Please go to the kitchen and have Cook put together a plate of something for Mrs. Mackenzie. I’m sure she is hungry after her journey. Oh, my man said you had children with you?”

“Yes. Our son is grown and our daughter is going to be eleven.”

“Have something done for them as well. And have Richards send for Mackenzie,” Lord Dunsany finished his direction. 

Geneva bristled at being so obviously dismissed but smiled at her father. “Of course. I won’t be long. Don’t burn through all the best conversation without me.” 

Once she was out of the room, Lord Dunsany relaxed. “If you are using the name Mackenzie, I presume you are aware of the terms under which your husband is groom here, Mrs. Fraser.”

“That he is here under strict parole? Yes, I am aware.”

“And what is it you plan to do now you are come? Do you expect me to take you into my house as well until the Crown sees fit to release him? I am running an estate, not a charity,” he continued. 

“I… hadn’t quite thought that far,” Claire confessed. “Seeing him and… making sure it really is him and he really is alive after all… that’s about as far as my plan went.” 

Lord Dunsany let out an amused snort at that.

“I wouldn’t expect you to let us stay here out of charity, by the way,” Claire informed him. “If you agreed to let us stay, I  _ would _ find some way to pay our way. And as I said, our son is grown and he is here now primarily as an escort so my daughter and I weren’t forced to travel alone.”

“The only sensible thing to do. It would be indecent for you to travel any great distance without protection.”

Claire nearly choked on a laugh as she wondered what Lord Dunsany would say about just how far she and Brianna  _ had _ traveled before ever setting out from Lallybroch for Helwater. 

“My point is… I can work and contribute and would do so gladly. I’ve more skill as a healer than a maid but…”

“A healer?” he interrupted. 

“Yes. I treated the wounded after battle all through the Rising and my husband’s tenants before that. I’ve had additional practice in the last few years as well.”

“Cook will be up with the tray momentarily,” Geneva announced, barging back into the room and crossing to resume her seat. “Richards said Mackenzie is in the upper field and will be some time yet.”

“Excellent. Mrs. Mackenzie was just telling me about her skills as a healer. I was going to ask if she would mind taking a look at that maid of your mother’s who is ill—Miranda?”

“Mirabella,” Geneva corrected. “She is a poor, sickly creature. Hardly any use at all but Mother’s fond of her and her needlework is excellent. I’m sure Mother keeps her on to prevent Mirabella selling her handiwork to anyone else.”

“I would be happy to examine the woman later,” Claire said, taking Lord Dunsany’s interest as a hopeful sign, a test of her possible usefulness in his household.

“Your Lordship.” It was the doorman again. “Hughes is asking what you would like him to do about Mrs. Mackenzie’s horse and cart, sir.” 

“Pardon me, ladies,” Lord Dunsany said, rising. “I’ll only be a moment.”

Claire kept her head high and held Geneva’s gaze after the older man had left the room. How much longer would the cook be with the food? She wasn’t hungry—there were far too many butterflies in her stomach at the prospect of seeing Jamie again for her to even think about eating—but she didn’t like the way this girl was looking at her and would prefer someone else remain present as well. Did the girl suspect the truth about Jamie’s identity? Not that he was Red Jamie, of course, but that he had been a Jacobite. Lord Dunsany knew the whole truth but what trouble might this foolish girl cause with such information and was she bored enough in their relative isolation at Helwater to use it?

“I suspected Mackenzie favored English girls,” Geneva remarked with a conspiratorial smile. “It’s nice to have my suspicions confirmed.”

So that’s what it was. Relief flooded through Claire. She’d handled jealous girls before. 

“He doesn’t,” she retorted with a serene smile. “Favor English girls, that is. Just one English woman.” 

Geneva chuckled as though Claire had made a joke. “Men are not content with just one woman. You can hope and pray they’ll be faithful, but they’ll always lust after someone younger—someone they can’t have.”

“Did your mother teach you that?” Claire asked with a skeptical laugh of her own.

“I thought it was common knowledge,” Geneva said, her tone shifting to one of pity. “It’s certainly what  _ I’ve _ noticed.”

“Inexperience can trick you into seeing and believing many things that aren’t true about men,” Claire replied with a pitying tone of her own. She saw a ripple in Geneva’s mask as her words struck a nerve. “There certainly are men who behave as you describe, but my husband isn’t one of them, as anyone who truly knows him could tell you.”

The tension behind Geneva’s polite smile hardened. “I suppose only time can prove which of us is right,” Geneva finally responded. 

There was a knock on the door and the cook arrived with a kitchen maid helping to carry the tray of food, saving Claire from answering.

“Fetch Mrs. Mackenzie’s children from the hall,” Geneva instructed. “I’m sure they haven’t had enough to eat today and we wouldn’t want to neglect them.” 

Claire watched regret blossom on Geneva’s face when Brianna came running to Claire’s side. Whether it was Brianna’s obvious resemblance to Jamie or her age, the game she thought she was playing had shifted and she seemed to realize she wasn’t winning after all. 

“Fergus is helping with the horse and our things,” Brianna whispered to Claire. 

“Miss Dunsany, this is my daughter, Brianna,” Claire offered as an introduction. “Be polite, Bree.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Brianna said quietly, staying as close to her mother as she could. She was adjusting to the strange time and place, but Helwater was intimidating, perhaps less because of its size than because of who they’d come there to meet. 

Geneva nodded stiffly. 

There was another knock on the door, heavier this time and a fraction of a second’s hesitation before it was pushed open and Jamie appeared.

Geneva shot to her feet and color rose in her cheeks. 

“Beg yer pardon,” Jamie apologized to her, “I was told his lordship was in here looking for a word wi’ me. I didna mean…” 

In glancing around the room for Lord Dunsany, his eyes had finally fallen on Claire. 

She smiled at him as tears filled her eyes. 

Geneva glanced back and forth between the two of them before resting on Jamie again and watching as he passed from disbelief to awe. 

“Sassenach,” he breathed, taking a shaky step towards her.

Claire stood and ran to him, wrapping herself around him and whispering his name in his ear. 

He began sobbing then, his arms tightening around her like he was afraid she’d slip away from him. She let her own tears fall as she murmured quietly to soothe them both, running her hand up his back and neck, digging her fingers into his hair and pulling some loose from its plait. 

Claire thought she heard Geneva mutter a breathless, “Excuse me,” before leaving the room but Claire didn’t care about anything except Jamie’s thankful prayers whispered in Gáidhlig against her hair. 

He pulled back at last to look at her briefly before leaning in slowly to kiss her. He tasted like their mixed tears and the gentle press of lips quickly deepened to something more urgent, the tentative test proving true and the blind need beneath rising to take over. 

But Claire remembered Brianna and how nervous she’d been about the prospect of meeting Jamie. She pulled back from him, a move that caused him to freeze with doubt. Taking his cheeks between her palms, she gave him one more gentle, reassuring kiss, and then turned toward Brianna.

Brianna’s face was bright red where she sat watching them. From the corner of her eye, Claire saw all the color drain from Jamie’s face as Brianna’s presence registered. His grip on her waist tightened reflexively. She traced his arms down to where he held her and loosened his hold on her, drawing his attention back to her. 

“The bairn?” he asked in a rough whisper. 

Claire nodded. “Jenny near fainted when she first met Brianna.”

“Brianna?” he repeated with awe. 

“For your father, as promised.” 

Claire took a few steps toward her daughter while Jamie remained frozen in place. When Brianna looked at her, she nodded, and Brianna stood to join her. 

She trembled nervously as Claire moved behind her and braced her hands on her shoulders to reassure her. As they approached Jamie, he sank to a knee to be level with Brianna.

“Yer mother’s told ye about me?” he asked. 

Brianna nodded. “Some.”

“Ye’re lovelier than I ever imagined,” he told her. “And I’ve spent a long time thinkin’ about ye—’bout you and yer mother both.”

“You’re happy we’re here?” 

Jamie nodded, fresh tears slipping silently from his eyes and leaving streaks through the fine layer of dust and sweat on his cheeks. “I dinna ken as I’ve ever been happier than I am just now. Is it… Would ye mind if I…” He lifted his hand toward her face but didn’t touch her until she nodded. 

He ran a finger lightly down her cheek and smiled when she giggled because it tickled. The end of her plait found its way between his fingers. It was only a few shades lighter than his own, just as bright as his had been at that age. Looking at her face was like gazing at his reflection in the water as a breeze disturbed the surface—recognizable flashes of himself but also echoes of his mother and brother, and then something entirely belonging to Brianna. 

The lass giggled again as she began to touch his face too. She rubbed her finger across the stubble along his jaw—he didn’t bother to shave more than twice a week; the horses didn’t care and he wasn’t head groom so he didn’t even deal with the Dunsanys face-to-face on most days. Brianna poked at the barely-there dimple in his chin. She had one in the same spot. But she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose that was missing from his own. Claire had given her those. He smiled and tilted his head so her palm caressed his cheek. The movement momentarily startled her stiff.

“I love you,  _ mo nighean _ ,” he whispered. 

She remained silent but smiled back, then stepped closer and slipped her arms around his neck, letting her head rest against his shoulder. He brought his arms up around her—so grown already and yet still so small and fragile in comparison to his own size. 

Claire bit her lip to keep from making any noise that might disturb them. 

“Are we gonna stay here with you?” Brianna murmured.

“I hope so,” Jamie answered with a glance to Claire.

“I broached the subject with Lord Dunsany—offered my services as a healer—but nothing’s been settled,” Claire explained. 

“But… ye do  _ want _ to stay…” Jamie stammered. 

Claire got onto the floor beside her husband and daughter. “I’d give just about anything for us all to be together.”

“I’ll speak wi’ Lord Dunsany—and John Grey too, if it comes to that,” Jamie said. “You findin’ yer way to me once might ha’ been a happy accident, but you finding me  _ here _ , again, after all this time _ … _ I’ll no let ye go again—either of ye.”

“Good,” Claire said, leaning into his other side so that the three of them were sitting on the sitting room floor, holding each other when Fergus joined them from helping with the horse and cart. 

“I have delivered your women to you safely, Milord,” Fergus declared, causing Jamie and Claire to laugh and Brianna to roll her eyes. 


	2. Chapter 2

It took three days for the new living arrangements to be settled. At that point, Fergus left to return to Lallybroch. Jamie was apologetic, repeating none of Lord and Lady Dunsany’s ungenerous thoughts concerning the uselessness and/or unseemliness of a one-handed man as part of the serving staff. 

Fergus merely shrugged when he learned that the Dunsanys did not consider him included in the agreement to take on the rest of their groom’s family. 

“I am a man grown,” he told Jamie and Claire. “I do not need the caring of a child like Miss Brianna. There was enough to hold me at Lallybroch only a little while longer when Milady arrived. I shall return to see what more Mistress Murray and Mr. Ian need of me and then I think I will go to make my way to a city like Rabbie MacNab wishes to do soon.”

“Ye dinna plan to leave Scotland do ye?” Jamie asked, doing a poor job of hiding the concern in his voice. It would make sense for Fergus strike out on his own and perhaps now that he was grown he would wish to return to France, but Jamie would feel better to have the lad somewhere close by—somewhere that wouldn’t require boarding a sea-faring vessel if he were free to someday visit.

Fergus frowned. “The only one who could inspire me to leave Scotland is you, Milord, and it does not take a seer to know that that will not happen for some time.”

Claire embraced Fergus and thanked him for accompanying Brianna and herself on their journey.

“It has been a privilege to see the young man you’ve become,” she told him. “And I hope that we will be able to see you again before too long. You must promise to write to us and keep us informed of where you are and what you’re about when you get there.”

“I promise, Milady,” Fergus replied, a mischievous smile distracting from the color rising in his cheeks. “And it is perhaps a good thing for me to go since you are to be the Mackenzies here. There is only one man I care to call ‘Milord’ and it is not that man Dunsany.” 

Jamie clapped Fergus on the shoulder, speechless, and then drew him in for a hug. “Thank ye, son… for everything ye’ve done these years. I’m proud of ye and bless the day I found ye pickin’ my pocket on the streets of Paris.”

Jamie and Claire stood leaning into each other, Brianna refusing to stray too far from her mother, as they watched Fergus mount the horse he’d ridden from Lallybroch. The second horse Claire and Brianna had ridden would remain behind at Helwater, Lord Dunsany providing small compensation to send with Fergus. “We can use another horse for simple errands,” Lord Dunsany had said. “It will save the carriage horses, keep them more presentable, which Lady Dunsany will appreciate.”

There were several other matters Lady Dunsany had reportedly given her opinion on, though Claire and Brianna had yet to formally meet the lady of the house. 

Claire’s examination of Mirabella had been brief. It was clear to her the maid suffered from anemia so Claire’s first stop had been to the kitchens to set about adjusting the woman’s diet. It would take a little while for the effects to be seen but Mirabella was already feeling a difference. Add to that the stitches Claire had administered to a kitchen maid who’d inadvertently sliced her hand and the Dunsanys were convinced of Claire’s usefulness in at the very least treating their staff and keeping them in working order. 

One of a handful of small cottages near the house had been designated for the Mackenzies, the servants’ quarters in the house being both too small for the family and inconveniently placed for Jamie’s duties in the stables. During the two days it took for the maids to clean and prepare the cottage, Claire and Brianna were given an empty maid’s room to share while Fergus stayed with Jamie and the other grooms in the barn loft. 

Claire and Brianna helped with the cottage, washing the windows, walls, and floors of several years’ worth of dust, then airing out the few linens and husk-filled mattresses Lady Dunsany was willing to provide until Claire and Jamie had an opportunity to purchase replacements of their own. Taking their meals at the house with the rest of the servants, Jamie and Claire had not had real time alone together since Claire’s arrival. There was so much they needed to discuss and little of it could be spoken of with Brianna around, let alone the Helwater household and staff who didn’t even know their true names. 

Having seen Fergus off that third morning, Jamie gave Claire a peck on the cheek before returning to work plowing one of the far fields. Claire and Brianna went to take care of the finishing touches on their cottage and discovered Lady Dunsany’s daughters hovering near the door. 

“We wanted to see what luck you were having with the cottage,” the younger daughter, Isobel, said with a smile. Geneva was tight-lipped as she watched Claire open the door and usher them inside. 

“It’s a work in progress,” Claire said, running a hand over the seats of the chairs to double-check them for dust before encouraging the ladies to sit. “But it’ll do nicely once we’ve settled. If you’d be so kind as to extend our thanks to your mother and father again…”

“Mother’s pleased with Mirabella’s treatment thus far and will be calling on you to treat one of her headaches before too long,” Isobel assured her. “I know Father’s been pleased with your husband’s work as well and would have been loathe to lose him if arrangements for you and your daughter hadn’t been possible.” 

“We’re all just relieved to be together again, whatever the circumstances—and these are far better than what we might’ve hoped.” Claire knew she would have to be careful what she said and how she said it around the young ladies of the house. They were young enough—and Geneva had certainly been forward enough—that Claire might be inclined to speak her mind and scold them, but to do so would be dangerous. She would need to have a few words with Brianna about the matter too. 

“How old are you, then?” Isobel turned to Brianna who stood beside her mother. Claire could sense the nervous tension in Brianna but the way she steadily held Geneva’s stare yielded nothing of it to those unfamiliar with her. 

“I’ll be ten in November,” Brianna said, turning her gaze from Geneva to her kind and smiling sister. 

“Have you had much education, dear?”

Brianna looked to Claire, uncertain how to answer.

“She’s had a bit of schooling, yes. I’ll take on her education between the duties I’m given by your parents,” Claire explained. 

“Would it be too forward if I were to offer you my time and services on the matter?” Isobel requested, surprising all three of the others and earning an array of expressions that made her pale cheeks color sweetly. “I have maintained correspondence with my former governess and would consult with her, of course, as well as you and Mr. Mackenzie.”

Claire looked to Brianna whose eyes went wide with fear and self-consciousness. 

“I’ll discuss it with my husband and Bree and we’ll let you know,” Claire replied carefully. “It’s a generous offer and we greatly appreciate it, whatever the decision we arrive at may be.”

“Well, we’d best leave you to finish your tidying here,” Geneva finally spoke as she rose from her seat. “It’s been a pleasure,” she added over her shoulder as she made a swift exit. 

Isobel scrambled, awkward and flushed at the abrupt end her sister had made to their visit.

“I have enjoyed this and apologize for swooping in on you unannounced. You must allow me to make it up to you soon—join me for tea? When it’s convenient for you, of course. We make our calls on Tuesdays but otherwise we’ll just be keeping one another company. Your presence would be a welcome one. Just leave word at the kitchen when you like.”

“Thank you, Miss Dunsany,” Claire said, habitually moving to shake Isobel’s hand and then drawing back before the young woman could notice. “Likewise, you are welcome to join me here if you ever wish for a change of scenery and conversation.”

Isobel smiled and nodded before finally exiting. 

Jamie was just on the other side of the door, smiling politely and waiting for the sisters to depart before slipping inside with a roll of the eyes and a sigh of relief when Claire slipped her arms around his waist and tilted her head for a kiss. 

“You smell like horse,” she whispered. 

“And you smell like yer dried herbs,” he whispered back, sniffing at her hair. 

“Bree helped me to pick and hang some to help clear the air in here,” she explained. “Now go wash and change so we can go to supper and get back here for bed.”

The grin that lit Jamie’s face and the knowing hunger in his eyes made Claire’s knees go weak. She peeked at Brianna who had slipped to a corner and buried her face in one of Jamie’s books. 

“When the lass is abed,” he said, ducking his head so his breath tickled her ear. “When she’s abed and I have ye to myself at last…” He inhaled sharply and the quivering in Claire’s knees moved higher, settling low in her belly.

“Wash,” Claire reminded him. “Then food… Then bed.”

“As my lady wishes,” he replied with a slight bow.


	3. Chapter 3

After dinner, Jamie had to go back to the stables to make sure all the horses were set for the night so Claire set about getting Brianna ready for bed. 

When Jamie returned, he found the cot that would be Brianna’s made up with the necessary blankets and pushed into a corner so there were walls on two sides. Both were in their shifts, Brianna beneath the covers while Claire sat with her back straight against the wall, a pillar for Brianna to lean against, her posture slipping as she drifted closer and closer to sleep. 

Claire had a book propped open in her lap and was reading by the light of a candle on the small table beside the bed. She winked at Jamie as he came in, barring the door against the night and the press of Helwater beyond. With the doors and windows shut, just the three of them inside, it was easy to pretend that the small cottage was all there was in the world, that nothing could or would disrupt the peace that was settling over them. 

He sat and began removing his boots and stockings, listening to Claire’s voice rise and fall with the intonations of one practiced in storytelling. 

She was reading  _ Robinson Crusoe  _ to Brianna. It must his copy brought from Lallybroch. He remembered the smile of familiarity she’d worn when running her fingers over the cover the day she’d found it on the shelf in his study. Still printed in her time, she’d told him. And on a shelf somewhere in almost every bookshop she’d ever visited. 

There was a pause, longer than just to turn the page. He looked up to see Claire watching him. Brianna wasn’t asleep yet and she nudged her mother to keep going. Claire patted the space on the bed on Brianna’s other side and then resumed where she’d dropped off. 

Cautiously, Jamie settled into the place she’d indicated and when the cot had finished creaking under his shifting weight, Claire passed the book over to him with an exaggerated yawn. 

Clearing his throat, he began to read aloud, stealing peeks at Brianna as she watched him, her eyes steadily glazing over with rapidly approaching sleep. Claire beamed as she wrapped her arms around their daughter, keeping her attention on him as well. 

He lost himself in the familiar story and the warmth of his lasses beside him. A nudge to his leg from Claire’s foot roused him from the waking dream. Brianna had fully passed out and Claire was pinned in place. 

A chuckle escaped him as he closed the book and set it aside, scooting across the bed carefully to keep the motion and noise from waking Brianna. It was a tricky set of maneuvers necessary to shift Brianna long enough to free Claire, then he lay Brianna down and pulled the blanket up to cover her. The lump in his throat was larger and the tears that slipped down his cheeks flowed freer than he would have expected. He leaned over and gently pressed a kiss to her temple, lifting his head before any of the tears fell upon her.

He never thought he’d see his child, let alone have the chance to read with her and bid her goodnight; that Claire would be there watching over him with a smile that told him he was doing just fine, even if he shook a bit as he ran his fingers along Brianna’s cheek and brushed the hair from her face. 

At last he stood, lest his ministrations wake the lass. Claire was immediately there, folding herself into his side, wrapping her arms around his middle, and resting her cheek against his chest. Jamie leaned his cheek against the reassuring cushion of her curls, then turned to kiss her crown.

She pulled back and he froze, doubt creeping up in his gut until he looked down at her and saw the warmth in her eyes. He remained in place as she rose on her toes and kissed him softly. Only then did he relax, loosening his jaw and welcoming her tongue as it slid along his lips, seeking his own.

His hands wrapped around her waist—the fit and feel precisely the way he remembered. The fabric of her shift wasn’t sheer but was thin enough for him to make out every line and curve as he ran his hands slowly up and down, working his way toward the roundness of her backside. 

Claire stopped his progress by grabbing his wrists and pulling away from him. Keeping hold and biting her lip, she led him from the cottage’s large and open main room to the long and narrow room adjacent. The only space the small table fit was at the far end beyond the hearth and there was only a single trunk for their clothes.

But neither of them were paying attention to the furniture beyond the bed. 

Jamie closed the door quietly behind them and Claire was immediately tugging at the hem of his shirt, her fingers incidentally brushing his groin in the process. At the sharp noise he emitted, she realized what she’d done and her hand slipped down to do it again while Jamie took over clumsily removing his shirt and then fumbling with the laces of his breeks before giving up and tugging the neck of her shift so it became loose and slipped down her shoulders. 

“Ye ken,” he gasped, “I kent ye were really here because of this.”

“Because of what?” she inquired, her hand continuing to stroke him.

“If ye’d been naught but a vision, I’d have had ye right there on the Dunsanys’ sitting room floor,” he growled and she laughed.

“But no,” he continued, taking her wrist and pulling it—reluctantly—away. “No, I’ve had to watch ye and wait for near three days to have ye to myself like this.”

Claire smiled, shyly, and pulled her shift so that it slipped further, finally pooling at her feet and leaving her completely exposed. 

“Am I worth the wait?” she asked, her tone playful but the question in her eyes sincere and a little nervous.

“God yes,” he breathed and then he was just as bare a moment later, though less-elegantly accomplished. The breeks clung to a foot as he pulled Claire against him and lifted her from the floor. Her arms and legs wrapped around him as he carried her to the bed, her mouth briefly finding his before moving along his jaw and throat. 

He lay her down and stood back, drinking in the sight of her and noting how motherhood more than time had altered her body. 

Her hair had come loose and was a tangled mess about her head and shoulders, the dark curls stark against the smooth, pale expanse of her skin. Her breasts were fuller and round for having been suckled by a hungry babe. He plotted the path his tongue would take, from throat and collarbone down to the first nipple, running in tighter and tighter circles until he took it in his mouth to suck and tease with his teeth. When the same had been done to the other breast, he would use his tongue again to find his way from the gully between down to her navel.

Faint lines marked the loose skin around her belly. It had only been a few brief months early in their marriage that her stomach had been flat. Before the first of their daughters had grown and sheltered there. He recalled feeling the child shifting inside of Claire—the press of a foot against his palm, an elbow against his side when Claire turned to him in bed… the swell of that belly against his stomach when he buried himself inside her… 

Movement from Claire’s hand drew his attention down between her splayed legs. 

She stroked herself with the same rhythm she’d used on him moments before. The throbbing pulse was growing more concentrated in his groin as she began to move her hips and bite her lip. 

He would use his tongue the next time, when he could take his time and draw their pleasure out to last hours. For this time, they had both waited long enough. 

Climbing on the bed, he knelt between her legs and took hold of her wrist, raising her arm and pinning it over her head as he stretched his body along the length of hers. She rocked her hips against him, eager and hungry as he was, nerves succumbing to blind need. 

Covering her mouth with his other hand to muffle the sound, he bit his lip and thrust deep, memory and imagination falling far short of capturing the sensation of belonging he found there. 

Locking eyes and sharing a soft kiss, they began to move together, slowly at first as their bodies confronted first the shock of joining and then the lethargy of remembered pleasures made flesh once more. But the dim echoes were soon drowned out by the roar of what was to come, and they happily gave themselves over to it.


	4. Chapter 4

Claire yawned against Jamie’s chest and he rearranged his legs so that hers was loosely trapped between both of his. She hooked her knee around the back of his and pulled herself that much closer to being on top of him. 

“How?” he whispered, fingers drifting up and down her pale back until she shivered. He took hold of the blanket then and drew it up so that it better covered both of them. “How did ye find me here?”

“I didn’t. Frank did.”

“Ye went back to him then.” 

Claire lifted her head and rested her chin on his breastbone in order to meet his eye. “I went back to him… because it’s what you asked me to do.”

“Aye. That it was. And things between ye…”

She turned her head to rest it against his chest once more, breathing deep and trying to match it to the rhythm rising and falling beneath her. 

“It wasn’t the way it had been before,” she admitted. “We got on well enough… but we knew it would never quite be the same. We had Brianna though. She made it easier.”

“Then what happened? I’m no complaining, mind,” he added quickly and Claire chuckled, draping her arm over his middle and snuggling closer. 

“He met someone else. She was working on her doctorate in his department. He didn’t say anything at first… but I suspected something had changed. He finally told me when… when he let me know he wanted a divorce so he could marry her.” The confession came in a rush and then she braced herself, uncertain what Jamie’s reaction might be. 

Sure enough, his body went rigid beneath her and his fingers halted their trailing up and down her back. With a grumbling sigh, he relaxed against her once more, his fingers resuming their interrupted journey.

“I cannae decide would I hit the man for bein’ a most ungrateful and blind fool… or would I shake his hand, for I assume the next ye’ll say is that if no for him sayin’ that, ye’d no be lyin’ naked atop me in this moment,” Jamie mused. 

Claire shrugged. “You have  _ two _ hands, after all. Who’s to say you couldn’t do both.” 

Jamie let out a loud guffaw before remembering Brianna was asleep just the other side of the wall. Muffling his remaining amusement, Claire laughed quietly as she bounced against his chest. 

“So he said he wanted to marry the other lass,” Jamie said, picking up the thread of Claire’s tale. “And I suppose ye had a thing or two to say about that.”

“Indeed. I told him if he wanted to end our marriage, it would also be the end of the agreement we made when I returned—that the only father Brianna would know about was him, that… that I would never tell her the truth about you, or my time with you.”

“Claire…” Jamie murmured, sympathy for her past pain washing over her with his breath as he touched his nose to her hairline and lightly kissed her brow.

“We negotiated for a while but had most of the important conditions decided that day. I could tell Bree the whole truth. He would get to see her and she would spend time with him and Sandy,” Claire explained. 

“And what did the lass say? When ye told her the truth of me?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper and his body tense again, this time with quiet fear rather than silent anger. 

“I waited until after Frank had told her he was leaving,” Claire confessed, her voice rising. “ _ After _ he’d told her about Sandy—and you had better believe I insisted he be the one to tell her about where he was going and why.” She sighed. “Maybe it was cowardly for me to wait until she was already angry with him—and she was. But when it felt right, I pulled out the newspapers from when I’d first disappeared and then the ones from when I returned… I pulled out your mother’s pearls and the plaid shawl I’d was wearing when I came back—the hospital had given everything I was wearing to Frank but that I had refused to give up when they were checking me. I took all of those things and set them aside in my room before going to Bree and asking her if I could tell her a story.”

“Did she believe ye?” 

Claire shook her head. “She was upset so I didn’t tell her it was a true story that first night. She felt bad for the husband left behind when his wife vanished. She felt worse for the wife and the husband she loved who was dead. And then happier again when she learned the wife had a child to love. The next day I told her the story was a true one and that I was the wife, she the child the wife and her lost husband loved. I showed her your mother’s pearls then and the shawl, the newspapers. I kept the stones out of it.”

“Was she as angry with you as she was wi’ Frank?”

“She was worn out with being angry by then,” Claire said. “She… she just… accepted it. I knew she was just numb. That she’d be more curious when everything had time to settle around her… but it didn’t. She went to visit Frank and spend time with him and Sandy—we’d visited the lawyers and the divorce was started. He wanted her to get to know her new step-mother. But Bree  _ couldn’t stand the woman _ —is it horrible that it made me so happy? She absolutely  _ hated _ Sandy. Though… I think a lot of that was anger she really felt for Frank—I know she must’ve said something to him about you.”

“About me?”

“Whatever she said, a few weeks later he brought her home from a visit and gave me a folder with his research into you. I don’t know how long he’d been looking, but he had found you—had figured out you survived Culloden and traced you through Ardsmuir. He’d lost track of you when the prison closed but it was enough for me to know that if I came back… I could find you again.  _ That _ was when I finally told Bree the rest of the truth—and she believed it enough to agree to come… to meet you.”

“Is she still angry wi’ Frank?”

Claire shrugged. “I’m not sure. She’s here. And I think she’s happy. She certainly enjoyed our visit at Lallybroch,” Claire smiled. “I can’t believe how many children Jenny and Ian have now. Bree spent all her time running around and playing with her cousins—learning from Kitty and Maggie how to plait her hair a certain way, following young Jamie around to learn the lay of the land, chasing after young Ian to be sure he didn’t get into things he wasn’t supposed to…” Another sigh from Claire. “She always wanted a brother or sister… asked about my parents and Uncle Lamb… why we didn’t have as much family as her classmates did. Watching her at Lallybroch was like watching her find the piece of herself she always knew was missing.”

“And now ye’ve come here and taken her away from that for who knows how long,” Jamie muttered, guilt creeping into his voice. 

Claire lifted her head to look at him again. She was too relieved to be there with him to let him ruin it with too much thought about what might have been or what might go wrong.

“We won’t be here forever,” she insisted. “And while she might not have her Murray cousins to keep her entertained just now…” Claire shifted along Jamie, kissing his chest as she moved herself so she lay atop him. She settled her legs on either side of his and rocked, her hips pressed to his so that she rocked against his groin, trembling as she roused herself as well as him. “It might be a few years late, but we might be able to give her a brother or a sister.” 

A hopeful smile slowly bloomed across Jamie’s face, inviting Claire to lean down and kiss him deeply, luxuriating in the feeling of his body warm and lithe and pressed along every inch of her own. 

“I think we owe her the courtesy of tryin’,” he agreed, pushing himself up into a reclining position that made it easier to reach around and grasp Claire’s arse, guiding her onto him.


	5. Chapter 5

Claire was inside tending to Lady Dunsany. Since Claire’s attendance on the maid had proven successful, the lady of the house felt the need to consult Claire’s expertise on several of her own lingering ailments—a rough patch of skin on the backside of her arm that the thought might be feverish; an ache in her knees and feet that she feared might be rheumatism; a cough that she insisted was persistent though from the looks exchanged by her daughters this was the first they’d noticed it.

“I need to take a look through your herb garden and perhaps explore the grounds and woods a bit to build up my stores,” Claire explained, “but I should be able to make a salve for your arm and another for your joints. And I’ll speak with the cook about brewing a special tea for you the next few days to take care of that cough.” 

Lady Dunsany smiled and sighed with relief. “Good. I should like to be in better shape while our guests are here.”

“You’re expecting guests?” Claire asked as she offered to help Lady Dunsany rise from the lounge so she could properly dress and leave her room.

“There are several family friends who will be staying here at Helwater for the next few weeks as the final arrangements are made and then for Geneva’s wedding,” Lady Dunsany informed Claire. “She’s going to be the Countess of Ellesmere in a fortnight’s time.” 

Claire glanced to Geneva who forced a smile to match her mother’s but it vanished as soon as the older woman’s back was turned. Color rose in her cheeks and tears were quickly blinked away before she glared at Claire, defiant and rejecting any kind words or pity Claire might dare offer. 

“Congratulations,” Claire said with a formality that Lady Dunsany took for deferrance and Geneva (hopefully) took for sympathy. 

Without a word of acknowledgement, Geneva turned and left the room, an apologetic looking Isobel following a few steps behind. 

Lady Dunsany’s smiles melted into an exasperated sigh. “Someday she’ll thank us. I understand her hesitation given the difference in their ages, but she will be well provided for whatever may happen to him, and she’ll have a commanding title to see her through life as well. It is what any mother would do for her daughter—my mother did. And yours as well, I suppose.”

“My parents died when I was a child. My first husband was my own choice and my second… we have both found more happiness and satisfaction from the arrangement than we could have hoped,” Claire explained, kicking herself for revealing so much. 

Luckily Lady Dunsany proved uninterested in Claire’s responses, only in her own generosity of consideration. “How long will these remedies take for you to concoct? I should like to be on my feet again to greet my guests when they arrive.”

Claire bit her tongue rather than point out that none of her ailments—even if they were genuine—actually prevented her getting out of bed. Instead she smiled politely, “I’ll have the tea brewed and sent up within the hour. The others likely won’t be ready earlier than this afternoon.”

With another sigh to make martyrs ashamed, Lady Dunsany sank back into her pillows and dismissed Claire from the room. 

Claire left gladly. She fought the unexpected urge to go after Geneva, confident the young lady would prefer being left alone to being confronted with a stranger’s pity. Instead, Claire headed for the kitchens to retrieve a basket before heading outdoors to gather what she would need to begin building a medicinal store. With assistance from Isobel, a slightly damaged chest had been sent to her cottage and Jamie had begun the necessary repairs to make it functional. It would sit on a low table against the wall, a peg nearby to hold a small sack or basket ready for hasty stuffing when emergencies should arise. 

Rather than fill her basket with herbs from the kitchen garden, Claire made a list of what was there and then started wandering through the nearest field heading for the woods. 

She only had a loose mental map of the Helwater estate and its bounds. Jamie had described them to her as they lay in bed, but without seeing them for herself they simply remained poetic imagery rather than something concrete and useful. 

“It’s a fair bit of land,” Jamie admitted. “No as fair as the majority of Scotland and certainly nothing to the Highlands… but after years trapped by stone walls or out on the desolate moors… I never thought I’d be so glad for the trees.”

“You never thought you’d go so long without them,” Claire had theorized. 

Striding through the tall grasses and breathing deep, Claire too realized how much she’d missed being in such a time and place. There had been plenty to enjoy about her life in Boston—Brianna, friends like Joe, the thrill of learning and practicing to be a surgeon—but being back in the 18th century with so much less noise and so much more green… She felt  _ right _ again. Of course, having Jamie back was a big part of feeling herself again as well. 

Her wandering wavered between purposeful searching for the various plant and fungi that should take up residence in her medicine cabinet and random exploration for her own sense of place. 

Turning over her list of herbs in the garden, Claire started an equally important list of the dangerous mushrooms and poisonous plants in the area, jotting down what she remembered of their symptoms for future reference. It wasn’t enough to know how to treat symptoms; she needed to be able to find the root cause, which meant making herself aware of the potential threats in the area to help diagnosis and effective treatment faster. She also made note of several raspberry and blackberry bushes, taking ten minutes to pick a mix of both while snacking on them herself. Perhaps she could send some up to Lady Dunsany to have with her tea. The extra Vitamin C and other nutrients might help to improve the older woman’s overall health and help her to feel stronger… though the success would depend on how true the woman’s symptoms were. 

Her skirts caught on the bush’s thorns and she muttered a few curses as she tugged to free them, the branches rustling loudly. 

“Who’s there?” a voice called sharply, startling Claire so that she dropped the basket and fell to the ground. Her skirts remained stuck on the thorns, pulling them down and scraping her arms as she fell. 

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” she exclaimed as a pair of young men in uniform emerged from the trees. British soldiers. The one closest to her stood at his full height, a hand near his sword. The other stood further back with both their horses. 

Claire swallowed her fear and reached up to finally pull her skirt free, ignoring the tearing sound and dusting herself off. The berries had spilled from the basket when she dropped it and she found many of them crushed against her skirt leaving it with erratic, damp polka dots. She sighed, defeated and frustrated. It would take hours to clean and mend the skirt and even then she would never fully succeed in eradicating the stains. 

“These lands belong to Lord Dunsany,” the taller and older of the two men infomed her. “Perhaps you merely trespass in error, but I would advise you—”

“I don’t trespass at all,” Claire snapped, snatching her basket from the ground. 

“You have permission from the Dunsanys? I apologize,” the closer soldier said, moving his hand from his belt to his chest and bowing his head. 

“Apology accepted,” she said with more formality than warmth. Could the Dunsanys have changed their minds about her and Brianna staying? Could they have summoned someone to take Jamie back to prison? 

“Might I inquire who you are, that I might endeavor not to make the same mistake again?” 

Claire snorted. “You mean so that you might verify with Lord Dunsany that I truly do have permission to be here?” She knew she shouldn’t have said it—taunting the soldiers was a surefire way to make things worse for Jamie—but the words were out of her mouth before she had time to stop the impulse. Luckily, her remarks appeared to amuse the soldier and he relaxed further. The other soldier was slowly guiding the horses through the underbrush toward them. 

“Well met. If you will not tell me your name, perhaps you will explain what your purpose here is—beyond picking berries, of course.”

“I’m a personal healer for the Dunsanys,” Claire explained lifting her chin to match the pride in the soldier— _ officer _ , she realized, taking in the finer details of his uniform. “My husband is a groom at Helwater. Mackenzie.”

“Mackenzie?” Something about the name caused the officer to pale and he turned to the other young man who appeared similarly pale and was suddenly watching her more intently. “Mackenzie is a Scottish name.” The lightheartedness was gone from his tone but he didn’t appear angry. He almost seemed worried.

“Yes, well, my husband is a Scot,” Claire responded, her patience waning even as she reminded herself to be accommodating and agreeable. 

“What’s your name?” the other soldier—also an officer, though a lower rank by the way he deferred to the first man. 

“Claire. Claire Mackenzie.” She really should have practiced saying it more so it came out more natural. She was sure they heard the breath of hesitation when habit told her to say ‘Fraser.’

“Claire,” the second officer murmured with disbelief, his eyes widening as though he recognized her. He leaned against one of the horses looking faint. “Bloody hell.”

“You have my name and purpose for being here,” Claire said carefully, inching backwards away from the soldiers. “Might you return the courtesy and tell me who you are and why you’re here?”

“Harold Grey, madam,” the first introduced himself. “You may call me Lord Melton. This is my brother, Major John Grey. We are here as guests of Lord and Lady Dunsany, here to celebrate their daughter’s marriage. And it is my brother’s responsibility to receive a report regarding a paroled prisoner while he’s here. Your husband, if I’m not mistaken—Mrs. Fraser.”


	6. Chapter 6

Claire was stunned silent, staring at Lord Melton and his brother.

Major Grey stepped forward, conciliatory. “It was my brother who spared your husband’s life after Culloden,” he explained. “It was in payment of the debt I incurred shortly before the battle at Prestonpans when he spared mine.”

Blinking, Claire stared at him and mentally subtracted the intervening years. “You broke your arm,” she recalled, at last recognizing him.

“Indeed. And you set it for me. It healed beautifully, I might add. It never gives me any trouble.”

“Right. Would you allow us to escort you back to the main house, Mrs… _Mackenzie_?” Lord Melton interrupted, conceding to the necessity of addressing her by the false name.

Claire glanced down at her stained skirt and her empty basket.

“You should go on ahead, Hal,” Major Grey said. “I’ll assist Mrs. Fraser in the task we interrupted and will ensure she gets back safely.”

“You don’t need—” she began to object, but Major Grey handed the horses’ reins to his brother and began picking a new batch of berries. “Thank you,” Claire said, giving up.

“Madam,” Lord Melton nodded before remounting and walking the horses back to the road leading up to the main house.

“Are the berries for a particular remedy?” Major Grey asked, depositing another fistful into Claire’s basket.

“Not exactly. Lady Dunsany was suffering from a cough this morning… among other complaints. There’s a tea I believe will soothe her throat and I thought the berries would complement it nicely. Having more fruits and greens in her diet is more likely to ease her complaints than worsen them,” Claire explained. “That’s the case for many people, actually.”

“Watercress,” Grey murmured. “Jamie said he’d got the idea of it stopping scurvy from you.”

“He told me you were governor at Ardsmuir while he was there and that he served as a sort of ambassador for the prisoners. He didn’t tell me the pair of you talked about _me_ ,” Claire informed Grey.

“He didn’t talk of you often or much—pained him to most of the time. But the pain of loss was one we shared. One I am… happy… to learn he no longer suffers from on your account,” Grey remarked, straightening after depositing a final handful of berries into Claire’s waiting basket.

“I’m sorry for your own loss, Major. And thank you for your assistance.”

“Shall we take the road back?”

“I’ve only recently arrived so I’m still learning the lay of the grounds.”

“Then allow me to take you by a favorite walk of mine,” Grey suggested, gesturing in the direction he meant them to take. Claire nodded and followed his lead.

“You are familiar enough with Helwater to have a favorite walk?” she inquired.

“My father was friends with Lord Dunsany and so our families were close, especially when I was young. Their late son, Gordon, was only a little older than I. We played at being soldiers together when we were boys. He joined the army when I was still too young… and was killed at Prestonpans.”

Claire held her tongue as she followed Major Grey through the underbrush and along edge of the trees to a half-plowed field.

“It’s a prettier walk in the late spring when the grasses are starting to get tall and the wildflowers bloom. But it gets turned over and planted with wheat—as you can see,” Grey explained as he picked his way over the rows. The sun above was already baking the moisture out of the dark, recently-dug earth, changing the color from a rich, muddy brown to a bleached and cracked variation.

“You said you’re here for the wedding.”

“Yes. We’re hoping to stay for three weeks if we don’t get called back from leave sooner.”

“Lady Dunsany spoke of other family friends who would be coming to stay…”

“I don’t expect you’ll know any of the other guests,” Grey responded lightly. “Unless you made the rounds of London society before you married Jamie…? Not that it makes much difference. The Dunsanys largely withdrew after Gordon’s death and though Lady Geneva is to marry the Earl of Ellesmere, he is respected more than he is liked. There are likely to be many regrets sent along with the gifts.”

“I shouldn’t like to think that our recent arrival was putting additional strain on the family when they’ve so much already to worry about,” Claire fibbed. Truthfully, she worried that the more people the Dunsanys had to stay, the busier both she and Jamie would be leaving them less time with one another and a greater strain on Brianna as she continued to adjust to more than just the change of scenery.

“Here we are,” Grey announced, smiling as he came to a stop as the land began to tilt.

Claire paused beside him and took in the view. It was a gentle slope down through several fields and toward the main house, a broad expanse comprising most of the cleared land that made up the Helwater estate. The fields became horse paddocks and gardens, then met with the shorter buildings housing the stables, outdoor kitchens, and along one side, the cottages that included the one the Frasers now called home. They were all dwarfed by the main house itself, sitting comfortably on a slight elevation making it easier for those within to monitor the workings of those without.

“I can see why this way is your favorite,” Claire said.

Grey made a small hum of acknowledgment and then began to descend the slope, keeping to the flat path along the edge of the field. It was a trajectory that would take them toward the stables—and Jamie.

“Your husband believed rather adamantly that you were dead, Mrs. Fraser,” Grey remarked. “Might I inquire as to what would cause him to believe that? And how it is you came to rejoin him here at Helwater?”

“He sent me away before the battle at Culloden,” she admitted. “Loss that day—or one soon after—was inevitable and he wanted me to be safe. When we parted… it was with the understanding that he wasn’t likely to survive. And for the last ten years that’s what I thought had happened. So many died that day and in the following days and weeks—not just the soldiers of the army, but many left behind supposedly safe at home… I had no hope for him as he had no hope for himself. I couldn’t contact his family when I had finally found my way forward again. I suppose that’s why he believed me lost as well,” she equivocated as the truth began to brush against what couldn’t be shared.

“And when you learned he lived, you came for him.”

“He would have come for me if he could,” she asserted.

Grey chuckled. “That he would.”

They were near enough to the paddock for the figures of the horses and grooms to take recognizable shapes. Jamie had firm hold of a lead rope and was walking an older gray mare about in slow circles. Brianna sat stiff and awkward as she experimented riding sidesaddle, her ruddy hair bouncing wild down her back with each step.

Grey stopped dead at the sight, his head whipping to Claire.

“You see now why he sent me away,” she said. “And why I let him.” She walked ahead, waving to catch Jamie and Brianna’s attention. Jamie lead horse and rider to meet Claire at the fence.

Grey was pale but soon recomposed himself and took halting steps to join the small family.

“It’s not as scary as I thought,” Brianna told her mother as Jamie helped her down. “But I don’t think I want to ride that way all the time.”

“Practice will build yer confidence but ye needna push yerself if it’s no what ye want,” Jamie said, color rising self-consciously up his neck. Claire gave him a smile of encouragement and offered the two of them a few berries from her basket.

“Care to come with me up to the kitchens to clean these and make them into something for Lady Dunsany to have with her tea?”

Brianna shook her head. “She came down to meet her guests and will have her tea with them. There isn’t enough here for all of them, I don’t think.”

“Major,” Jamie said warmly, as Grey approached. “They said Lord Melton had arrived wi’ an extra horse. Said ye’d be along but no that ye’d come this way before ye went up to the house.”

“Mackenzie,” Grey greeted Jamie, his eyes sliding to the groom standing in the barn doorway. Still, he was relaxed once again, the color returning to his face. “We encountered your lovely wife on our way and startled her I’m afraid. I offered to see her back and give her a brief tour of the grounds as she said she is still newly arrived.”

“You’ve been a charming tour guide,” Claire thanked him.

“And I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of your company as well… but if I don’t make my appearance at the house shortly, I will have my brother to answer to. I will speak with you again soon.”

“We’ll have a game of chess if ye wish,” Jamie offered.

Grey smiled. “Indeed. You may beat me as often as my brother, but you’re more considerate and crow less when you do.” He touched his hat and strode off toward the house.

“Gave ye a fright did he?” Jamie asked, his voice low and his mouth twitching into a smile.

Claire showed him her stained skirt and heard Brianna snort next to him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Come he’ll or high water is excellent can you please write more I love it 🥰 please thank you 🙏🥰🥰🥰👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Rain pattered against the window while Brianna sat at the table in the corner with Isobel working through a set of simple mathematics problems. She didn’t have the heart to tell Isobel that she’d mastered both multiplication and long division two years prior. Instead she worked her way through them slowly, allowing herself the fun of observing the others in the room while they thought she was thoroughly engrossed by the numbers on the page. 

Brianna had found soon after her arrival at Helwater that she couldn’t help but like Isobel—she couldn’t have borne pretending she was so far behind in her studies otherwise. But Isobel’s sweetness could become grating if not for the presence of her sister, Geneva. It was Geneva who knew exactly how to push Isobel’s agreeableness to the brink, to coax a few less-than-kind remarks out of Isobel—and then offer reassurance that she hadn’t been so unkind as to require begging anyone’s pardon. 

There was more to Geneva that Brianna found mesmerizing, however. Quiet moments when she managed a glance at the older girl and it was clear Geneva didn’t realize she was being watched. In those moments she looked the way Brianna had felt when Mama and Daddy had told her the great and terrible Truths of her life—first, that Daddy wasn’t going to live with them anymore, he was going to live with his special friend, Sandy, and, just a short time after that, when her mother informed her that Daddy wasn’t her “real” father. From what Brianna could tell, it was partly Geneva’s parents who were causing her to look that way, but not because they were breaking up. No, the lady Geneva was going to be married soon and anyone could see she didn’t want to get married. 

But that was why there were beginning to be so many extra people at the estate. They were guests visiting for the upcoming wedding. Several older relatives of the Dunsanys had taken to sitting with Lady Dunsany in the main sitting room while the younger guests preferred to gather in the drawing room. It was in the adjoining library that Isobel was giving Brianna her lessons but the door was kept open so Isobel might pop in and make her necessary appearances every so often. Brianna thought Isobel perhaps preferred the quieter library to the group in the drawing room.

Brianna enjoyed peeking up at them through the doorway. She could only see a portion of one setee and a fragment of the floor to ceiling windows behind but Geneva was partial to planting herself on that setee and as the bride to be, she frequently had company beside her—usually one of the two British soldiers who had startled her mother in the forest that day they’d arrived. The younger of those two often turned to glance through the same open doorway at her, which always made her flush and look down at her paper. Or was he looking at Isobel? Brianna peeked up to see Isobel looking flustered as well, no doubt aware of the soldier’s piercing gaze. 

Even if Brianna could convince herself that the young man was paying his attentions to Isobel, all it took was Geneva seeing her sister’s blush to throw a wrench in Brianna’s plans of going unnoticed. 

“Isobel,” Geneva called rising from the setee and floating to the door. “Aren’t you going to join us? As the sister of the bride it’s part of your duties to help me entertain my guests,” she teased with a playful giggle and glance over her shoulder. “John, Hal, won’t you help me coax Isobel into joining us?”

Isobel sighed but smiled at Brianna before pushing herself up from her chair at the table. “You’re doing wonderfully,” Isobel assured her. “Keep working on this set of problems and I’ll be back shortly to check your progress.”

Brianna nodded and then watched as Isobel glared at her sister who stood in the doorway with a satisfied grin on her face. 

“Really John, you  _ must _ ask Isobel about her latest obsession with playing governess,” Geneva continued, the conversation still drifting in for Brianna to overhear since the door between the rooms remained open. “It’ll be something to keep her occupied when she no longer has me around to entertain her.”

Isobel spoke too quietly for Brianna to hear but from Geneva’s subsequent, “Oh come, I’m only playing,” she assumed the young lady had rebuked her. 

“It is the curse of younger siblings to always be tormented by the older,” John remarked, lightening the mood even as he too scolded Geneva. 

Brianna set her pencil aside and leaned forward over the table, straining to see if she could catch a glimpse of them but they must be standing near the fireplace. The rain outside was unrelenting in a spring that was already slow about taking root. That was one of the things about this time that Brianna found most frustrating and quietly terrifying—how cold it was without proper, modern heating and how afraid she was that she would get too close to the hearth or that she’d knock over a candle and go up in flames. 

“I  _ know _ Isobel’s attempts to improve the poor child arrive from the best of intentions,” Geneva assured the others and Brianna could hear the eye roll in her tone. “I just think that when it comes to the staff and their families, it’s not our place to interfere. They have their lives and we have ours.”

“And the fact that their livelihood depends upon our whims doesn’t matter?” Isobel challenged more vocally, clearly surprising the others. 

Brianna rose from her seat and tiptoed closer to the door to hear better and maybe sneak a better angle through the door so she could see them while remaining hidden in the shadows. If she was truly lucky, there’d be a mirror on one wall that would let her watch their reflections—she couldn’t remember if there was a mirror in the drawing room though. 

“So long as they’re paid for their services, I’m not sure I understand to what you might object,” the older one—Hal, Geneva had called him—said gently. 

“They require decent pay to support their families,” Isobel agreed, “and sometimes they’re compensated in other forms—for instance, housing or their meals—but what about their other needs, especially for their children? Is it not our duty to guide them towards being productive members of society where their parents are either lacking the means or the opportunity?”

“And what makes you think the Mackenzies are lacking the means and opportunity?” Geneva countered. “Did you ask them if they wanted it when you asked for their permission? Shall we ask the little lady now?”

Brianna panicked for a moment as she heard Geneva’s footsteps crossing toward the door but her instincts quickly kicked in. She started walking for the door herself and nearly collided with Geneva.

“Sorry,” Brianna muttered, backing away. “I was just coming to ask Miss Isobel if she might excuse me to go help my mother. Miss Isobel should be spending her time with your company, not with me just now.”

“I don’t mind at all, really,” Isobel insisted but Geneva made a dismissive gesture, keeping her eyes on Brianna. 

“The child is quite right, don’t you agree, John? It’s terribly rude of Isobel first to ignore your presence and then to ignore her young charge’s. If she had a nursemaid, we might turn her over to so she doesn’t inhibit her mother in her work. Should we engage one for her, Isobel?” Geneva asked, looking over her shoulder at her sister. “Would that be more of the means and opportunities that our hired servants are lacking? I suppose we’ll just have to keep an eye on her ourselves then. Come child,” Geneva turned back to Brianna with an overly sweet smile. “Join us in the drawing room and we’ll try not to bore you too terribly.”

Brianna stood her ground, staring expressionlessly at Geneva. 

“Geneva…” Hal said quietly, stepping toward her. 

“Quiet little thing, aren’t you,” Geneva murmured, her attention still fixed on Brianna. “Do you speak at all?”

“I’m ten, not two,” Brianna replied, unamused even as the color began to rise in Geneva’s cheeks. “And my mother always told me if I didn’t have anything nice to say I shouldn’t say anything at all. I’d rather spend my time somewhere I can have a conversation. Thank you, Miss Isobel, for the lesson. I’ll see myself out.”

Brianna kept her ears pricked for their reactions as she turned on her heel and went to the table to retrieve her things before exiting through the door at the side that led to the servant’s passage and from there down to the kitchen. She heard one stifled chuckle (Hal) and Isobel’s gentle, “ _ You _ were the one who provoked her.” 

The sound of a slight commotion drew most of the others back into the drawing room—a footman announcing the arrival of another guest.

“Daniel,” Hal exclaimed in joy. “It’s a miracle you made it in this weather. You ought to have stayed at your inn until it cleared.”

“If he did that he might not have arrived in time at all,” Geneva declared, brushing away the awkwardness of being put in her place by a ten-year-old girl. “The way it looks now it could rain through the next fortnight and my wedding’s one week away. He knew I’d never forgive him if he wasn’t here.”

“Always said Gordon was like a brother to me so I see it as my brotherly duty to make sure everything stays on schedule,” a new voice chimed in. 

“Well you might’ve been as a brother to Gordon but you’ve hardly been a brother to either of his sisters,” Geneva objected with a laugh. “You haven’t written a word to either Isobel or myself in over a year.”

Brianna snuck one final peek through the door to the drawing room. 

John, the soldier who had come walking through the field with her mother that day, was the only one watching her as she made her exit.

* * *

“Bree,” Claire gasped as her daughter barged into the cottage, dripping wet from her brief run through the rain from the main house. “For heaven’s sake, what are you doing here? I was going to fetch you back after your lesson was finished. You’re soaked to the bone.”

“Well you might wind up back there later treating their latest guest. Sounds like he rode a ways through the rain and I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes down sick from it,” Brianna said, shaking her hair like a wet dog. 

“Sassenach,” Jamie called from the cottage’s back entrance. “Do ye have anything hereabouts we could eat? Thought it might be nicer to have our midday meal alone together rather than trek through the muck to the main house. And as Bree’s occupied there with Miss Isobel…” 

Claire cleared her throat loudly soon after he began and spoke over him, “We’re in here, Jamie. Bree’s just got back too. We hadn’t addressed the subject of lunch yet.”

Jamie came around the corner, his face pink and dripping with the rain that had soaked his hair. 

“Bree,” he said with a smile. “Is it wet enough for ye out there? I ken I must look and feel like a half-drowned cat.” 

“Well it  _ is _ raining cats and dogs,” Brianna remarked without enthusiasm. 

“Why don’t you fetch some dry things from your trunk and change in our room,” Claire offered. 

“I suppose we won’t be using it after all,” Jamie whispered in her ear as he brushed a kiss against Claire’s cheek. 

“I had brought a leftover side of ham from the house after tending the cook the other day,” Claire continued, ignoring Jamie, “and there’s cheese I had set aside as well. We’ll see what kind of meal we can make with that and maybe it will let up enough tonight for a larger meal with the others at the main house.”

When Brianna had closed their bedroom door behind her to change, Claire turned into Jamie’s arms and stood on her toes to give him a kiss.

“When the wedding’s over and their guests have gone home, things will calm down enough that we’ll have a little more time for ourselves,” she whispered, pulling away from him as his hands drifted down to her backside. “Not just the two of us, but the three of us.”

“Except for when we have time just the two of us to get back to work on making that three of us into a  _ four _ , aye?”

“Aye,” Claire smiled and blushed. “Though by my watch we’ve spent a fair bit of time working at that already.”


	8. Chapter 8

Claire tried to wait up until Jamie came to bed but he’d sat near the fire trying to read. She didn’t want to push him to talk if he wasn’t ready, but she watched his attention drift, over and over again, to the fire in the hearth. Instead, she warned him about what staring like that would do to his eyesight and he brought his attention back to the page without saying a word. Checking on Brianna first, Claire finally gave up and crawled beneath the covers.

When he did finally come to bed, his restlessness woke her and kept her from more than dozing for near an hour before she rolled toward him to confront him. 

“Out with it.” 

Jamie sighed. “It’s just… I cannae help but wonder if Brianna… if this is where she truly wants to be.”

“Well, I can tell you right now it’s not where she wants to be,” Claire said as gently as her tired and filterless brain would allow. “She wants to be back in the place and the time that was home to her for so long.”

“Ye think she wants to go back to the way things were before she kent the truth about me,” Jamie guessed with aching resignation. 

Claire rested her head on his shoulder and slipped her arms around him, holding him and comforting him. “Yes, but I don’t think it’s anything to do with you. Not really. She’s growing up and she’s having a difficult time of it right now. When you were her age, I’m sure there were times when you wished you could go back to how things were when you were younger—when everything seemed clearer and made more sense.”

He relaxed a little in her arms—not much, but a fraction that was  _ just _ perceptible. 

“I dinna ken how to feel myself these days,” he confessed. “I dinna like to see her suffer—and I hate feelin’ sae helpless to do anythin’ about it…”

“But?” Claire prompted.

“But I’m no sorry she’s here, nor that she kens the truth.”

“The truth about you or the truth about Frank?” Claire mused with a hint of her own pain. 

“No that he deserves it but if it meant she wasna hurtin’ so, I’d as soon she didna ken the sort of man he turned out to be,” Jamie muttered, holding Claire tighter. “I’m sorry I ever sent ye back and trusted ye to him. He didna deserve either of ye.”

“And now he has neither of us. And, with time, Bree will heal. Time and love.” Claire pressed a kiss to Jamie’s neck and moved her hands down his back, a maneuver that forced him to move his own arms and hands further down along her body. His fingers began to absentmindedly massage the flesh of her arse. 

“What am I supposed to say to her?” Jamie asked in a whisper of doubts. “It’s no an easy life she’ll have in this time, to say nothin’ of this place. I cannae leave when I want, nor go where I wish… Ye cannae even use your proper names on my account.”

“Time and love,” Claire repeated. “You’ll figure it out.  _ I’m _ still figuring it out. But you said once that what we don’t know we’ll learn together.”

Jamie’s mouth ticked up at the corner briefly but then his expression softened and saddened. Claire watched him swallow with difficulty. 

“I cannae help but worry that one day she’ll decide she’s had enough of bein’ here and she’ll go back,” Jamie murmured. “After wishin’ ye both here for so long… it doesna seem possible it’ll last.”

“Then stop thinking about it,” Claire whispered, pressing herself against him. “Stop thinking period. You need to relax or you’ll never sleep tonight. But… if you’re not going to be sleeping… I can think of a few things you can do instead of thinking.”

Jamie grinned and rolled onto his back, pulling her along with him so her weight kept him grounded and her thighs fell open on either side of his, rucking up her shift so the soft silk of her brushed against him. 

“Ye’re volunteering to do my thinkin’ for me?” he teased. 

“I have no qualms telling you  _ exactly _ what to do,” she replied, her breath tickling his ear. 

His fingers dug more purposefully into her buttocks as he began sliding her up into a better position. Her hair brushed his face as she leaned down to kiss him. 

There was no thinking when she kissed him like that. There was consciousness of anything except that what he tasted was unequivocally her, the warmth and weight in his arms was her, the scent climbing up his nostrils was them. 

Because he wasn’t thinking, he didn’t place the sudden pounding that he heard. 

But Claire did. 

She froze, her head whipping up to look at their closed bedroom door. She scrambled off of him and grabbed at the blanket to cover him while she threw her shawl around her shoulders and listened. 

Another pounding, this time at their door. 

Claire eased it open and he noticed the flash of Brianna’s hair as she poked her head in. 

Jamie’s head was beginning to clear and thought return as Claire opened the door wider and spoke to someone else on the other side. Her tone was reassuring but also serious, her subsequent movements organized and practiced. 

“What’s happenin’?” he asked, sitting up and blinking. “Who is it?”

“Lady Isobel’s come to fetch me to the house,” Claire explained as she skipped her stays and various other support garments, going straight for her outer skirt and a bodice. “She says something’s happened to her sister but she’s not sure what—only that there’s blood and it needs to be kept quiet.” 

Jamie was out of bed and across at Claire’s side, helping her find her things in the darkened room. 

“Do ye need me to come wi’ ye? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Stay with Bree,” Claire requested, reaching up to cup his cheek in her palm, run her thumb lightly over his cheekbone. “And get some sleep. I’ll be back before dawn.”

She slipped out to the main room of their cottage and Jamie followed her. He gave Isobel a nod before realizing he shouldn’t be standing before her in just his shirt. But the lass was too dazed and worried to even notice. She watched Claire grab her cloak and throw it over herself and the medical pack she carried then slip into her shoes. 

“Lead the way,” Claire instructed, snapping Isobel into action and following her into the night. 

Brianna stood at the door for a moment watching them go while Jamie shuffled into his discarded pair of breeks. He went to stand behind Brianna, looking out into the dark though he could no longer make out the shapes of either Claire or Isobel and it was only the night sounds of the yard and the horses in the nearby stables that reached his ear. 

“Ye dinna seem surprised by Miss Isobel showin’ up in the night,” Jamie remarked. 

Brianna looked up at him for a moment then pulled back toward him so she could close the door and head back to bed. 

“I wasn’t expecting her,” Brianna said. “But I’ve seen Mama leave to help someone sick plenty of times.” Jamie stayed where he was but turned to watch her climb onto her cot and wriggle back beneath the blankets. “Daddy used to try to unplug the upstairs telephone so it wouldn’t wake me up but Mama complained that even if she woke up when the one downstairs rang, she couldn’t use the phone upstairs if it wasn’t plugged in and that it defeated the purpose.”

“Did it bother ye that she would go like that?” 

Brianna shrugged. “I sometimes wished I could go with her. Especially…” But Brianna shook her head. “Nevermind. Goodnight.” She rolled over to face the wall, pulling the blankets up around her shoulders. 

Jamie slipped over to her cot and sat on the floor beside it, not wanting to unsettle her by taking a seat right next to her. 

“I always wish to go wi’ her,” he confessed. “I wish to see her safe to the sickbed and for her to have my help if she needs it—though, there are many cases where she’s said I’d be a hindrance more’n a help.” Brianna rolled onto her back again and turned her face toward him. “It’s the not knowin’ when she’ll be back tha’s always been hardest. At night like this, wi’ the way Miss Isobel was lookin’—all scared and like somethin’ terrible’s happened—tha’s when it’s hardest.”

“It was usually accidents if she got called in the night. Or something bad happened to a patient she operated on earlier in the day. When I got older, those were the worst. I could tell when she answered the phone and they said why they needed her. She had a special look when it was someone she’d already treated… kinda sad and… like maybe she worried she’d done something wrong,” Brianna shared. 

Jamie nodded. “It’s no easy for her here when she kens she could do better—do  _ more _ —were she still in yer time.”

It was Brianna’s turn to nod. 

“I ken it’s no easy for you either,” Jamie said quietly. Brianna’s eyes darted to his but she relaxed when he smiled at her. “I’m glad ye’re here. The waitin’s easier when ye’ve company beside ye.”

She smiled at him. “You’re not gonna tell me to go back to bed?”

“No. We can just sit here if ye like. Or I can fetch the book and we can read a bit more—see if that puts us to sleep.”

“Won’t Mama mind if we read ahead without her?”

Jamie’s knees cracked when he pushed himself back to his feet so he could grab the book from its shelf and light a candle. “I dinna think so, but we could start a new one just the two of us, if ye’d prefer. We can see how far we get before we fall asleep or yer mam comes back.”

“I bet we can get through twenty pages,” Brianna said, propping herself up in the bed and yawning. 

Jamie pulled up a chair and handed Brianna the candle to keep steady while he opened the new book to begin. 

“Let’s aim for ten to start and see how we do. Now, do ye ken the tale of Don Quixote?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Hi, ladies! Just wanted to say I love the stories, and one of my favorite ones is Come Hell or Helwater, and I'd love to see more of it ♥️♥️

Claire tried to get more information from Isobel as she followed the girl through the mud of the yard to the main house. The rain had let up earlier that afternoon but clouds shrouded the moon suggesting that the reprieve would only be a temporary one.

“Your sister sent you to fetch me?” she asked. 

“I wanted to send for Mother but she said I shouldn’t bother her and that I wasn’t to wake anyone in the house, so I asked if I could come for you and she said I could if it would make me feel better,” Isobel explained, rambling in her anxious state. 

Claire felt the surge of adrenaline begin to abate as they came to one of the servants’ entrances near the kitchen in the back of the house. 

“Wait,” she urged Isobel in a whisper. “If we need to be quiet about this, I want you to tell me now what’s happened. Why did you want to fetch anyone? You said there was blood?”

Isobel looked longingly at the door for a moment before turning back to Claire and taking a deep breath. “I don’t know what woke me exactly. Usually it doesn’t take too much—the wind or the rain. That’s what I thought it was at first—the wind picking up because the rain was starting again. It sounded like it was howling but as it went on, I realized it wasn’t the wind at all.” Isobel blinked back at the sympathetic wetness gathering in her eyes. “It was Geneva. She was crying, trying to muffle it in her pillow. My room is across the hall from hers. We used to sneak out of bed and climb in with one another when we were younger and had difficulty sleeping or if we heard the other wake with nightmares. I found her in bed but there was some blood too—on her hands and on her shift.”

“But she was conscious and coherent,” Claire said, clarifying and reassuring Isobel. “We’ll be as quiet as we can but from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like she’s in immediate danger. Now… lead the way.”

Isobel seemed calmer as she led Claire into the deserted kitchen. Claire held her back a moment, grabbing a towel and urging her to clean her feet, which, to Claire’s horror, were bare. She also did her best to wipe the mud from her own shoes and minimize the evidence of their trail through the house. Satisfied, she nodded for Isobel to continue showing her the way up the servants’ stairway to the side of the house where the family’s sleeping quarters were.

It was strange to be in that part of the house and  _ not _ encounter another soul. Each time Claire had gone to see and treat Lady Dunsany there had been housemaids and other servants scurrying around—tending fires, replacing flowers, dusting, carrying clothes to be washed and mended… The carpeting was thick and muffled the sound of their footsteps, even when they passed over spots where the floorboards beneath groaned under their weight. 

Isobel didn’t knock, just tried the handle and then the door eased open on silent hinges and Geneva stood before them looking composed and annoyed on the surface, but Claire noted the puffiness around her eyes and the strain in the way she held herself ushering them in and closing the door behind them. 

“You… you’ve changed,” Isobel whispered, glancing at Geneva’s crisp shift. 

“Go to bed, Isobel,” Geneva instructed her sister. “I let you go for Mrs. Mackenzie, now please, go to bed.” 

Isobel looked to Claire with uncertainty and reluctance. Claire took one look at Geneva and smiled at Isobel to reassure her. “Go on,” she said warmly. “I’ll make sure she’s alright and then I can see myself out. You’ve done everything you should’ve and now you need your rest.”

Conceding, Isobel slipped back to the door and across to her own room, Geneva going to peek into the hallway to see that Isobel’s door closed as she’d been bid before shutting her own once more. Claire noticed the momentary ripple of relief through Geneva’s shoulders before she turned and the tension was back holding her straight and tall, that polite smile on her lips. 

“I’m sorry my sister pulled you from your bed and wasted your time. I assure you I’m fine. I don’t know what notions she got into her head but I’m sure it was some dream that she couldn’t shake once she woke,” Geneva told Claire, her voice quiet and apologetic. 

“If that were true you wouldn’t have put the fear of God into her about waking anyone up,” Claire challenged her as gently as she could, “and the shift she said was stained with blood wouldn’t be in your fireplace now. You’ll need to be sure every last scrap burns or it’ll start gossip. Now, first things first, are you injured or in any pain?”

Geneva held Claire’s gaze, defiant and proud for a moment but her eyes were beginning to shine in the darkness. “No,” she yielded at last. 

“Will you tell me what happened and let me examine you? If there was bleeding, I just want to be sure it’s safely stopped and if it needs to be dressed that it’s treated properly so you don’t contract an infection,” Claire explained. 

Geneva remained tight lipped but Claire could see flickers of the war she was waging with herself. 

“I swear to you that anything you say to me in this room will be held in complete confidence,” Claire assured her. “It was part of the oath I took when I became a healer. I won’t share anything about this with anyone—not even your mother.  _ You _ are my patient and your needs are my priority.”

A dam inside Geneva cracked enough for silent tears to begin weaving their way down her cheeks. Claire took slow steps toward Geneva, realizing again just how young she truly was behind the bravado. She loosely put her arms around Geneva and gave the girl her shoulder to cry on. Geneva remained stiff for a moment but the crack in the dam split wider and she needed to grab hold of something or risk being swept away. She clung to Claire while her body shook with silent sobs. 

“I have an idea of what might have happened,” Claire whispered when Geneva had transitioned from jarring shakes to a more controlled trembling. Claire pulled back so she could look Geneva in the eye. “I know you said you’re not injured but I need to know, were you attacked?”

Geneva failed to look indignant though Claire had the impression she was trying as she shook her head and pulled out of Claire’s grasp. She turned to the bed, staring at the bedclothes, still rumpled from sleep… and perhaps more. 

“I… asked him to come,” Geneva said quietly. “It was  _ my _ choice. I thought…” her voice wavered and there was an audible hitch as she drew in a deep breath before continuing. “I thought… it would be easier… marrying Lord Ellesmere and… I thought it would be easier if I could at least choose for myself…” She turned to face Claire again, tears shining in her eyes and her expression furious and terrified. “But how can I go through with it now? I thought, one night. I thought it would be enough to have that first time be someone I wanted.” She sighed and dropped onto the bed, leaning forward, her hands curling in the fabric of her shift. “How am I supposed to share that man’s bed when I know what it’s like to…” 

Claire crossed and eased herself down beside Geneva, careful not to touch her or otherwise spook her. 

“I thought my husband was dead for ten years,” Claire told Geneva. “I had a child who needed a father… so I was married to another during those ten years… and shared that man’s bed. I had known him before and he was a good man.” Not as good as she’d remembered or maybe it was that their time apart had changed them both. It didn’t matter anymore. “It’s… different… Physical desire is only one part of the equation when it comes to sex. Even that… the body reacts sometimes, whether you want it to or not. But it’s different when it’s with someone you truly care about… someone you love,” Claire said gently. “I lay with my other husband during those years and… even when I enjoyed it… it was never quite what I have now.”

“I fancied him when we were younger but assumed he saw me as a sister because of how close he and Gordon were. I didn’t know he fancied me too. I was just… desperate… when I hinted at what I wanted… But he agreed. And when he came earlier… he told me he loves me and if he could have… he would have said or done something. But he has nothing to offer that my parents…” Geneva rambled, the words pouring forth, carried along by the combined weight of the burden and the swirling emotions. 

“It wasn’t an attack but did he hurt you?” Claire asked. “He wouldn’t necessarily have meant to…” 

Geneva shook her head. “Not more than he’d warned me about. He… he started with kissing me and then we moved to the bed and he touched me too.” Geneva’s legs clamped together tight, trapping whatever sensation her memory conjured. “And it felt… so good,” she sighed. 

She wasn’t looking at Claire but rather at the shift slowly burning in the hearth. Claire wasn’t sure Geneva registered her presence at all. 

“He told me that from what he’d heard it would probably hurt the first time but that he’d try to be gentle and quick about it. And he was right. It did hurt a little at first but then it started to feel good again and I didn’t want him to stop. He told me to lie still and he took a cloth to clean me up…  _ there _ . I bled a little but it had stopped. I asked if he would come to my room again and he smiled and said we had more time before he had to leave—that the next time would be better. And it was. He said he loves me and I told him I love him and… we made love.” 

Claire could just make out the color rising in Geneva’s cheeks and suspected it wasn’t from embarrassment or her own presence. 

“I fell asleep after and when I woke… he’d gone. It was like I’d woken from a perfect dream and then I realized… I had.” She turned to Claire again, her self-consciousness beginning to return. “It’s like it didn’t really happen. It’s not going to stop my wedding or change anything except now I know what it should be like, what it is I’ll never have.” The tears were winding their way silently down her cheeks again, her attention shifting to the few bloody scraps of fabric that remained in the hearth. “I realized I was bleeding again and I wanted to scream but couldn’t. I must have been making some noise because that’s when Isobel came to check on me and… you know the rest.”

Claire slowly extended her hand and took one of Geneva’s, giving it a squeeze of sympathy. 

“As I said before, I won’t breathe a word. But you should consider telling your sister. Aside from the fact that she’s worried for you, I think it will help you to have someone more than me to share this with,” Claire suggested. “Now… I’d like to give you a physical examination to be sure the bleeding isn’t a sign of something more but I’ll need natural light for that. I can give you some herbs that will help ease the soreness—because trust me, even if you don’t feel it right now, you will feel sore. You need to let them steep in warm water and use a cloth to apply them—not soaking wet, but rung out and tucked between your legs like you would during your courses for a few minutes at a time. Say you have a headache and ask if I can come make something for you. That’ll give us a chance to get in a physical exam.” 

Claire rose from the bed and carried the medical bag closer to the hearth, so she could use its light to find what she was looking for. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Mackenzie,” Geneva said with a sincerity Claire had never heard from the young woman before but the formal edge was beginning to return. “Your discretion is appreciated.”

Claire merely nodded as she pulled the corners of a scrap of cloth around the little pile of dried herbs, twisting the ends and tying them with a bit of leftover twine from her bag. Then she carried it over and held it out for Geneva to take. “For ten years I believed my husband was dead and that I’d never again have what Jamie and I shared… But I was wrong and it’s still there and is even more precious for having thought it lost.”

Geneva looked up at her, the reluctance to hope raw in her eyes but its spark sinking in nonetheless. 

“I wouldn’t entirely give up on your young man if I were you. Life has a way of surprising us and Mr…?”

“Daniel,” Geneva murmured. 

“Ten years is a long time but I guarantee you’ll be in a different situation then than where you find yourself now.”


	10. Chapter 10

The heavy rain had returned while Claire was indoors attending to Geneva. There could be no waiting. The household staff would rise before whatever dawn there might be to begin the day’s chores and Claire needed to be back at the cottage by then. 

She slipped and nearly fell several times as she hurried through the dark, slick yard, unable to avoid puddles she couldn’t see. Her teeth were chattering, her skirt was filthy and soaked, she could feel the mud sliding down her legs and pooling in her shoes. 

Free of the house and of the young woman’s desperation and fear, Claire was able to let her forced calm dissolve and wash away with the rain. She was furious with Lord and Lady Dunsany for what they were putting their poor child through. The girl was still a teenager and they had essentially sold her to a man more than three times her age—older than Dunsany himself! 

But it was the girl’s regrets that countered that hot anger and sent a chill through her bones (deeper than the cold of the rain could penetrate). Her own situation hadn’t been so very different when she returned through the stones to Frank. He wasn’t a  _ complete _ stranger, of course, and she’d still felt a great deal of affection for him, even after Jamie… but everything she did with him felt like a betrayal—not even of Jamie so much as of herself. She had done so much to push him away, on some level it had been a relief when she learned of his affair. She’d said and done nothing in its early days, silently encouraging it and letting it grow where there had almost certainly been a window where she might have nipped it in the bud. 

She shivered and tried to force her legs to go faster but her feet were growing numb with the cold. 

Jamie had left the cottage door unlocked so she wasn’t left standing on the step with the water pouring off the roof and down the back of her neck waiting to be let in. 

Brianna was asleep on her cot with Jamie seated on the floor beside her, his knees drawn up and a book resting against his thighs. One of his fingers marked the page while his head had lolled back to rest against the wall. He jolted when Claire closed the door behind her and rested against it, water dripping from every article of clothing she wore as well as her hair. It took him a moment to register her condition and then he was reaching for the edge of the bed to leverage himself to his feet. 

Brianna whimpered and rolled over but remained asleep. Jamie gently pulled the blanket up to her chin and leaned across her to blow out the candle resting on the small table at the other side of the bed. He placed the book beside it and crossed quickly to Claire. 

“Ye’re soaked to the bone, Sassenach,” he whispered rubbing his hands up and down her arms beneath the folds of her cloak before cursing under his breath and whisking the uselessly soaked cloak off her shoulders. He brought it to the fireside and spread it over a chair to dry as best it might then he was back at Claire’s side standing close enough for her to feel the heat of his body as he slowly walked her to their bedroom. 

“Is the lass alright?” he asked as he left her side briefly to stoke the fire in the hearth. Shadows leapt and danced as the fresh fuel caught. 

“I can’t talk about it,” Claire said, shaking her head. “Physician patient confidentiality.”

Jamie snorted and she could hear him rolling his eyes as he bent to help her off with her mud-crusted shoes and stockings. “I didna ask what wrong wi’ her and I’ve no objection to ye keepin’ it quiet if ye feel ye must. But will she be alright? Her sister seemed beside herself.”

“I don’t know,” Claire admitted. “Physically she’ll be fine but… I can’t talk about it. Those… throw them in the corner. I’ll see if they can be salvaged in the morning,” she nodded to the stockings. 

“I cannae believe ye went out wearin’ so little wi’ the rain,” Jamie muttered as he helped her out of her bodice and laid the sodden article on the floor near enough the hearth for the heat to aid in drying it but not so close it was in danger of catching falling sparks (not that any would succeed in igniting the fabric in its current state). 

“It wasn’t raining when I left,” she reminded him without much weight behind the words. She stared at the bodice and was glad she hadn’t bothered with her stays. She only had the one set and those wouldn’t possibly have had time to dry before morning. 

Her numb fingers stumbled on the ties for her skirt, then Jamie’s were there resting against them until she relented and let him take care of it for her. 

“No petticoats either,” he muttered under his breath, holding her steady while she stepped free of the skirt. 

There was a prickling of sensation and warmth returning to her body as she watched Jamie fuss over her and her wet things. Frank had rarely done such things for her. Perhaps because she’d never let him. There had been plenty of evenings and mornings when she’d returned from a shift, exhausted and dispirited over something that had happened with a patient. And she’d shut him down, blown him off, ignored his offerings and insisted she was fine. She’d desperately needed someone to lean on, but she had wanted that someone to be Jamie. By the time her resilience had broken down and she would have accepted his comfort, he’d stopped offering it. 

She still wasn’t used to having it again.

“Jamie…” she murmured as he helped peel her out of her damp and clinging shift. “Make love to me.”

He glanced her over as she stood there naked and shivering, an uncertain look in his eye but there was a pleading in her expression that kept him from scolding or laughing. He took a blanket folded at the foot of the bed behind her and shook it out, wrapping it around her and kissing her forehead. 

“Must get ye warm first,” he said quietly, rubbing his hands over the blanked along her arms. 

She didn’t beg or tease. She just watched him, barely blinking. The shivering slowed and eventually his hands did too. Then he bent his head and kissed her again, this time lightly on the lips, his hands and the blanket still pinning hers to her sides. She sighed, leaning into him. Then he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. 

The solemnity of the moment before was broken by the awkwardness of his laying her down, still rolled up tightly in the blanket with her feet hanging over the edge. Leaning next to her and kissing behind her ear, along her jaw, and down her throat, his hand successfully rucked the blanket up and found its way between her thighs. 

“Only proper way to be sure ye’ve warmed enough,” he breathed against her neck, the delicate curls stirring and tickling. “Mmm… ye’re certainly no cold…”

She gasped and arched her back, her legs spreading against the taut fabric of the blanket. 

“But ye  _ are _ a bit wet, aye?” he chuckled and kissed her, swallowing her laugh as it carried on and became a moan of pleasure. 

Each stroke from his fingers had her writhing against the constriction imposed by the blanket. She gripped it tightly, grounding herself as Jamie pulled her closer and closer to dissolution. 

“I want to watch ye,” he teased, the fingers of his free hand tracing her cheek and lips, gently covering her mouth to muffle the sounds of her mounting ecstasy so they wouldn’t wake Brianna. 

There was a sly satisfaction in his grin when she yielded that last bit of control and pleasure tore through her. She gradually became aware of the sound of him chuckling against her cheek and the fact that the blanket around her had loosened. She turned to look at him and felt his hand sliding down the inside of her thigh again. He brought his fingers to his mouth, his eyes locked on her flushed face as he tasted her satisfaction. 

It was only when she managed to free herself from the blanket that she realized how thoroughly the chill had been banished. Gooseflesh erupted across her arms and breasts, but she turned her attention to Jamie where he had sprawled beside her. He sat up to help her relieve him of his shirt and then leaned back on his elbows as she pressed her lips first to his throat before beginning a slow progress down his chest and across his stomach. The muscles tensed beneath the light pressure of her mouth until she was at the buttons of his breeks. He’d tasted her. Now it was her turn to taste him. 

But she’d barely gotten him free of his breeks when she felt his hand in her hair, not urging her on but guiding her back up toward his mouth. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and let his other hand trail down her back and over her buttocks, giving them a playful squeeze. 

“Mmmm, I ken what ye were thinkin’ and I dinna have it in me to hold on if ye do that,” he murmured in her ear. He was twisting and running his hand along her thigh, pulling her into a position straddling him. “I still want to watch ye.” His hand slipped between them to help him find his way into her. She bit her lip as she sank onto him, leaning her forehead against his and draping her arms around her neck. His arms slipped around her waist, holding her firmly to him as their bodies sighed into one another with recognition, longing, and relief. “And I want you to watch what you do to me,” he purred. 

She silenced his teasing with a slow rocking of her hips. His eyes locked on her face, his hands on her hips guiding, he responded in kind. 

It was gentle and fluid as a dance, the balance and shifting of weight, the sliding of hands across flesh as they pushed and pulled, caressed and teased. There was no room for thought, and no need for words. Their bodies spoke a language of their own, asking and answering, offering and accepting, journeying together. 


End file.
